Across the Wide Missouri (1951)

November 7, 1951

THE SCREEN: FOUR NEWCOMERS ON LOCAL SCENE; 'Detective Story,' Film Based on Sidney Kingsley Drama, Arrives at Mayfair Clark Gable in Western at Loew's State Comedy About Marriage Comes to Roxy At the Roxy At Loew's State At the Midtown

By BOSLEY CROWTHER

Published: November 7, 1951

Sidney Kingsley's play, "Detective Story," has been made into a brisk, absorbing film by Producer-Director William Wyler, with the help of a fine, responsive cast. Long on graphic demonstration of the sort of raffish traffic that flows through a squadroom of plainclothes detectives in a New York police station-house and considerably short on penetration into the lives of anyone on display, it shapes up as an impeccable mosaic of minor melodrama on the Mayfair's screen.

That should define the entertainment. Mr. Kingsley's talents were applied to a task of elaborate documentation of a busy squadroom in a theatrical frame, shaping into a fluid pattern myriad details of the baroque locale and the knocked-about personalities of the permanent residents and the riff-raff that goes through. And that is the pulsing panorama that Mr. Wyler has got upon the screen in as crisp and dynamic a handling of the material as could well be conceived.

Within what amounts to a matter of no more than six or eight hours in the cluttered and crowded headquarters of the Twenty-first Squad Detectives, a half dozen or so human crises are suddenly developed and passed and at least that many more vignettes of freakish human nature are exposed. There is the pathetic young fellow who has stolen for a fast-stepping doll, at last brought to sober realization of the nice girl who loved him all the time. There are the two rattle-brained burglars, an unredeemable pair, one of whom is a fourth offender and a definite man to watch. There is, too, the little shoplifter, a serio-comic girl; there's the "bull" who still grieves for a lost son, and many, many more.

But most particularly there is the detective who has a bitterness toward the world that drives him to go after criminals with a relentless and overpowering zeal—a man whose fixation on convictions brooks no pity or compromise. And it is the accumulation and revelation of a crisis in this man's life that make for the major interest and dramatic cohesion in the film.

To put it quite baldly and bluntly, which the picture commendably does, he discovers that his wife was once a patient of an illegal practitioner whom he has spent more than a year of careful sleuthing to bring to unassailable book. Thus his own wife becomes the challenge by which his capacity for pity is tried.

Do not search too hopefully for plausibility in this case. Neither Mr. Kingsley, the scriptwriters nor Mr. Wyler have—and that is the one shortcoming and disappointment of the film. The fact that the hero is a fanatic is merely stated, never explained; thus his violent and mingled reactions toward his wife have no solid, convincing grounds. And the consequent clashing and slashing of their tangled emotions that go on make for nothing more penetrating than a good superficial show. Toward its end, which is grisly and fatal, this observer was still wondering why.

However, as we say, that complication is but the arbitrary prop for the display and is no deeper than necessary to anchor the support for a story line. It is the complex of business in the squadroom, staged so snugly and naturally therein that Mr. Wyler hasn't even used mood music, that makes for interest in this film.

In the performance of this business, every member of the cast rates a hand, with the possible exception of Eleanor Parker as the hero's wife, and she is really not to blame. Kirk Douglas is so forceful and aggressive as the detective with a kink in his brain that the sweet and conventional distractions of Miss Parker as his wife appear quite tame. In the role of the mate of such a tiger—and of a woman who has had the troubled past that is harshly revealed in this picture—Mr. Wyler might have cast a sharper dame.

However, that is the one weak link. Mr. Douglas is, detective-wise, superb — and Horace McMahon runs him a close second as the keen-witted boss of the squad. William Bendix, Bert Freed and Frank Faylen are fine as assorted "bulls," while Lee Grant, Craig Hill and Joseph Wiseman stand out among the characters they run in. To toss off more plaudits for the acting would mean to go down the whole list.

"Detective Story" is a hard-grained entertainment, not revealing but bruisingly real.

It wouldn't surprise us if Claudette Colbert, Macdonald Carey, Zachary Scott and the other sporting participants in "Let's Make It Legal" had about as much fun as did the Roxy audience yesterday morning. At any rate, amid a welter of historical and psychological film sagas a bright little comedy of middle-aged American divorce has quietly slipped into town. And no spectator with an ounce of insight or mischief will be any worse for the wear, we guarantee.

The nicest thing about this trim package from Twentieth Century-Fox is that for all the sly, wholesome winking at the American home scene in general, it manages to be adroitly constructive about such elements as "friendly" divorce, the selfishness of children, long-visit in-laws and the fatal absurdities of marital pride. Miss Colbert is a nice, streamlined grandma happily anticipating grass widowhood after twenty years of wedlock with Mr. Carey, a droll fellow with a penchant for bookies and rose bushes and collecting his belongings, even on the eve of the divorce. Up pops Mr. Scott, their high-school crony and now a millionaire bigwig in the government, to collect Miss Colbert. Rooting for Papa's aroused campaigning is Barbara Bates, a spoiled daughter, and on Mr. Scott's side is Robert Wagner, her manly young husband who is determined to nurture his own brood under his own roof.

Richard Sale has so saucily directed the proceedings, which, incidentally, reunite the parents with a most original story twist, that the cast will have to share a bouquet between them. They are fine, one and all. But the real star of "Let's Make It Legal" is, we suspect, F. Hugh Herbert. This gentleman is an old hand at writing family comedies of all-American vintage, of course, having graduated from the "Janie" and "Kiss and Tell" format to the more sophisticated "Mr. Belvedere" series. This time Mr. Herbert, abetted by I. A. L. Diamond, has aimed some sparkling, sensible dialogue at the American hearth. And Miss Colbert, her colleagues and Mr. Sale have turned it into a real Martini.

On the Roxy stage are Xavier Cugat and his orchestra, Abbe Lane, Los Barrancos, El Gringo, Dulcina, Otto Bolivar, George Lopez and George Conley.

Although Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer has expended much time, technical skill and, undoubtedly, a fair amount of money on "Across the Wide Missouri," yesterday's new arrival at Loew's State can be listed as a disappointment. For the adventure, which treats of the questing trappers—the "mountain men" who broke the trails into the vast Northwest Territory during the early decades of the nineteenth century—could have been the rich substance out of which moving history was made. It is, instead, merely a halting, sometimes verbose Western, which only rarely captures the imagination and fleetingly portrays the excitement of the period or the fearless, sturdy men who were responsible for the epic story inherent in the period.

It is difficult in this case to ascertain where the fault lies. The script written by Talbot Jennings only was "suggested" by the fine book of the same title written by Bernard DeVoto. And it is a screen play that merely outlines the character of Flint Mitchell, who, in 1829, set off with a brigade of assorted frontiersmen to invade the little known Blackfoot country—an uncharted, forbidding area teeming with precious beaver and unfriendly Red Men. What made the Indians antagonistic or thebeaver valuable is barely indicated. The producers apparently were interested in developing their hero's idyllic life with his comely Blackfoot squaw and his differences with Ironshirt, a Blackfoot chief who hates the white intruders.

But William A. Wellman, a director who has handled men of action before, now and again has come up with a memorable scene. Included among these is one in which Mitchell stalks his Indian enemy, another in which the mountain men rendezvous to dance, drink and fight and still another in which Mitchell gives chase to both Ironshirt and a horse stampeding into the forest with his infant son. The cameras also have caught the wild, majestic beauty of a West unmarked by civilization — a sweeping and varied area of snow-covered mountains, dammed pools, virgin forest and lush meadow land.

Obviously the cast enjoyed its safari into this rugged country even though their lines were many and uninspired. Clark Gable is a gruff, laconic, brave and unshaven leader, whose moments of action are few but who spends considerable time communicating his ideas — and slowing up the story — to Adolphe Menjou, a French trapper, who, in turn, translates his palaver in Indian talk. Maria Elena Marques, as Gable's Blackfoot wife, and Ricardo Montalban, as Ironshirt, have nary an English word to speak, while John Hodiak, as a Scotsman who has been living with the Indians; Alan Napier, a Scot adventurer and veteran of Waterloo, and Jack Holt and J. Carrol Naish, as Blackfoot chiefs, make brief and inconclusive appearances.

But despite the off-screen commentator (Gable's son) who maintains that they were "mountain men who searched for beaver and found glory," they are simply people in a film. They are not the giants who helped open the West.

"Toast to Love," a Mexican made love story of sorts, opened at the Midtown Theatre yesterday. Irina Baronova, a ballet dancer, and the music of Tchaikovsky, are the only redeeming features. When the camera centers on the stage where Miss Baronova is dancing "The Sleeping Beauty" or "Swan Lake," your lassitude will be momentarily relieved. But only momentarily, for the story is a hackneyed hodge podge of murky love troubles, while the acting is presumptuous and dull. There seems to be no reason why anyone should bother seeing "Toast to Love," unless you've never seen a ballet danced or heard Tchaikovsky played.